"The Piazza Tales" is a 1856 collection of six short stories by Herman Melville, featuring highly regarded works such as "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno." While critically acclaimed, the collection's sales were reportedly low.
Herman Melville's "The Piazza Tales" (1856) is a collection of six short stories, including acclaimed works like "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno." Despite positive reviews, the collection did not sell well, though many of its stories are now considered Melville's key short fiction achievements.
| Front | The Piazza tales |
|---|---|
| Back | The Piazza Tales is a collection of six short stories by American writer Herman Melville, published by Dix & Edwards in the United States in May 1856 and in Britain in June. Except for the newly written title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly in 1853-1855. The collection includes what has long been regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands. (Billy Budd, arguably his greatest piece of short fiction, would remain unpublished in his lifetime.) Quick facts: Author, Country … Melville had originally intended to entitle the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches, but settled on the definitive title after he had written the introductory story. The book received largely favorable reviews, with reviewers especially praising "The Encantadas" but did not sell well enough to get Melville out of his financial straits, probably because short fiction for magazines had little appeal to bookbuyers.[citation needed] From after Melville's rediscovery to the end of the twentieth century, the short works that attracted the most critical attention were "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno" and "The Encantadas," with "The Piazza" a little behind those.[citation needed] |
Learn with these flashcards. Click next, previous, or up to navigate to more flashcards for this subject.
Next card: Picaresque term spanish picaresca pícaro rogue rascal genre
Previous card: Phoenix poem turtle love published birds spelled phœnix
Up to card list: Wordsworth companion to literature by Bahman Moradi